


Another Person's Words

by Ranni



Series: All the Ways [4]
Category: Avengers, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: And surprisingly has remained so for this entire series, Avengers Movie Night, Bruce Banner Is a Good Bro, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Domestic Avengers, F/M, Gen, Getting Together, Hurt Clint Barton, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Clint Barton/Tony Stark, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, POV Steve Rogers, Phil Coulson is still fake dead, Protective Steve Rogers, Protective Tony Stark, Steve Rogers Feels, Team as Family, Thor is probably a good bro also, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-31 19:12:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13981521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ranni/pseuds/Ranni
Summary: Steve isn't the only one that doesn't catch all those movie references.Natasha plans it with the same grim intensity she brings to any mission, and where Tony would tease and Clint scoff, where Bruce would shake his head in disbelief, Steve is only grateful. She doesn’t like to be left out of things and he doesn’t like to be embarrassed. So many of the problems they have are unsolvable, but not this one—they can do this, can learn the language the others already know so easily.(All stories in this series can be read independently.)





	Another Person's Words

**Author's Note:**

> I started and stopped three different Steve stories before landing on this one. I've been struggling to get anything completed, but wanted to give our heroes one more happy/hopeful ending before the Infinity War breaks out!
> 
> This completes the series at last (apologies to Thor--I haven't seen any of his solo movies).

 

*******

“You know what I hate?” Natasha says without preamble. “Movies.”

She’s standing in Steve’s doorway, and that itself is unusual; no one has ever come to his apartment since the day Stark showed him around excitedly, talking with grand, sweeping gestures. Everyone hangs out in the common areas typically, and there have been spontaneous gatherings in everyone’s living quarters…except for Steve’s. Maybe they think he needs his privacy, or enjoys the quiet. And he does.

Usually.

“Oh.” Steve has no idea what to say to such a statement, and that’s probably okay since she doesn’t appear to have any expectation of an answer. She just stands there in the hallway until he gathers his wits and manners and takes a step backward. “Would you like to come in?”

Natasha glides into his living room, not venturing any farther but looking around with unabashed curiosity, checking his view and then skimming the titles on his bookshelf. She nods in obvious approval at a boxed set of the Narnia Chronicles and he feels oddly pleased, as if he’s passed some sort of test. His art supplies are scattered around, but she stays well away from his drafting table and drawings, which is a relief. They’re more personal than the books.

“So… _why_ is it that you hate movies?” Steve asks, straightening up a little, gathering pencils. Natasha hands him a chunky eraser that had fallen to the floor.

“Because they all know them, and I don’t,” she answers emphatically, as if the few minutes of silence following her initial declaration had never happened. “Even _Barton_ knows all those movies, and I can’t imagine where he found time to watch any of that crap, with the lives we lead. It’s as if they were _weaned_ on pop culture, spoon-fed movie quotes, studied celebrity scandals in school. I’m fluent in six languages but I can only puzzle out about half of their bullshit.”

She falls quiet again, watching and waiting with obvious expectation. It takes him a minute to catch on—he’s always behind everyone else it seems—but she doesn’t seem to mind.

“Me either,” he says finally, and gestures to his couch, a too-large, overstuffed thing that no one but he has ever sat on. “You want to try and figure it out together?”

 

*******

Natasha plans it with the same grim intensity she brings to any mission, and where Tony would tease and Clint scoff, where Bruce would shake his head in disbelief, Steve is only grateful. She doesn’t like to be left out of things and he doesn’t like to be embarrassed. So many of the problems they have are unsolvable, but not this one—they can do this, can learn the language the others already know so easily.

She uses JARVIS to make a list, a list that—even when single spaced—is as long as Steve is tall, a list so long that it will take them _years_ to get through. It’s a little daunting, but part of him is looking forward to it.

“Star Wars is a throwback to old serial films that the creator watched as a boy,” Natasha paraphrases, eyes moving steadily between her tablet and the television screen, where enemy ship zips across the screen with a droning whine. “Look for archetypes such as ‘simple hero versus overly complex villain’ and ‘seemingly minor characters affect the course of the universe’.”

Steve frowns and nods. “Okay, yeah, that’s pretty obvious.”

They don’t take notes exactly, but Natasha does mark the list with her own sort of shorthand—a black checkmark if she liked the film, a blue one for Steve, a few words here and there to capture any team references. _Hate=suffering_ she writes next to “Star Wars”, as well as _The Force_ and _Yoda_.

They slog through a few of the Star Trek movies ( _Spock, beam me up_ ) and then watch what JARVIS advises them are notable episodes of the television shows ( _Evil Spock, The Borg, sexy captains)_. Steve finds that he loves the Indiana Jones movies ( _Belongs in museum, Nazis, hat/whip)_ and Natasha is enamored of the first two Godfather movies ( _Sleeps with fishes, go to the mattresses, not personal just business_ ), but only sheer commitment to the project forces Steve to keep watching “The Matrix”.

They both enjoy “The Fellowship of the Ring” ( _Legolas_ , _second breakfast, My Precious_ ), though it takes them a few sittings to get through it, due to work and life interruptions.

 “We shouldn’t have to do all this work to understand all those references. Why don’t people just say what they mean?” Steve asks finally. “Why do they need to use—" he gestures vaguely at the rolling credits on the screen, “—another person's words to do it?”

“Maybe it’s because we’re all _so_ great at expressing ourselves,” Natasha observes, rolling her eyes. “I think people see something of themselves in movies and in books, feel a spark of recognition, of kinship. When they don’t have the words, they can explain it with a modern metaphor that many others also know—a form of communication through something we have in common.”

“Maybe,” Steve says doubtfully, but it sounds right.

“It’s just another language, Steve, and one we _can_ learn.” She’s got her mission face on again, intense determination on the surface with a whirring mind underneath. “Remember when Gandalf died, and the Fellowship was weeping, then had to pull themselves together and keep running? That’s how I felt that day in New York, after Coulson died.” It’s a sweet sentiment, and apparently genuine, but from her taut expression the words take painful effort.

If Tony or Clint were here they’d make some sort of joke right now, to cut the tension and get them back to something lighthearted—perhaps a clever comparison of Iron Man to the eagle that saved the wizard, or the Hulk to a cave troll. Steve likes a good joke as much as the next person, but he’s never been able to come up with one as rapidly as the others can, nor has he ever found undermining someone’s heartfelt statement with immediate humor to be the kindest thing to do.

“Remember how Frodo looked when he feared the Ring but agreed to take it anyway?” he says instead. “That’s the way I feel every time the Avengers suit up.”

Natasha doesn’t make a joke either, just nods with a hum of acknowledgement. A moment passes, long but oddly comfortable, before she tilts her head back toward the television.

“There are two more of those movies.”

Steve grins. “Let’s start the second one.”

 

*******

For awhile, for a long while, it just works. The _team_ works. None of them question _why_ it does, because all of them want it to happen, and it all goes well so easily and for so long that Steve starts to let himself think that it won’t ever be any other way. That’s why it’s a surprise, but probably shouldn’t be, when it all goes to hell spectacularly.

It’s beautiful outside, a day made for hiking or fishing or going to a county fair. Instead the Avengers are fighting, a little harder than they’ve become used to in the last year, because typically they’re an overpowered team, but this time the enemies just keep coming. They’re all exhausted and Clint and Natasha are low on ammunition, and it’s definitely not a retreat. It’s more of a… _tactical regrouping_ at a position where SHIELD can provide reinforcements. A regrouping that just happens to be made at a rather quick clip, the kind of pace that Stark would qualify as ‘hauling ass’, if he wasn’t being so uncharacteristically quiet.

The Hulk doesn’t join them; he’s the front line of his own army, uncontrollable and dangerous, and he’s also the one the enemy is targeting the most. Steve cringes at every explosion, even though he’s pretty sure—well, _Bruce_ is sure, at least—that the Hulk is bomb proof. The green Avenger roars and Thor shouts something, and it’s never exactly clear what happens next—if the Hulk threw the flatbed of cars or if the nearby blast caught them. They never look too deeply into it later, mostly for Bruce’s sake, and also because it doesn’t really matter.

“Oh God, oh no, please God, oh no.”

It’s the only thing running through Steve’s mind and he doesn’t even care that they can all hear him over the open comm line, because they can hear something else, too, Clint’s choked gasps and Tony’s curt “Over here!”

Tony lifts the car and Steve slides in to crouch in its shadow, instinctively pressing his hands against the blood spurting from Clint’s upper chest. The sun is shining cheerfully on them again as Tony hurls the car away, his faceplate peeling back in the same motion, looking terrified but still moving quickly to stabilize Clint’s head and neck.

It had all been going so well. The team had been clicking along so well, he and Natasha had been getting along so swimmingly, and Steve had just begun feeling like he had a foothold in this new life, that he could make a map of it. Now Clint is going to die, and the team will fall apart when that happens, and it will all be Steve’s fault, because he didn’t call for a retreat sooner, because he never could make himself back down from a fight.

 The Hulk keeps roaring, oblivious to the human drama behind him, and Thor and Natasha charge forward as well, determined to end this thing quickly now, at any cost. Usually Steve would take issue with that, but not this time. Not with a friend’s blood still welling out from between his fingers. Tony murmurs something to Clint, and it could be either a tirade of threats of what will happen if the archer dares die, or a long string of sweet, reassuring nothings—with Stark, both are equally possible.

Steve just keeps pressing hard, measuring time by Clint’s heartbeat beneath his hands, the way his lungs still move with labored breaths, the way the SHIELD medics get closer and closer with every running step.

 

*******

When Steve broke his arm as a kid, the subsequent cast was huge and bulky and white, and Bucky had signed his name on it with a flourish and a felt tipped pen. Now Bucky is long gone, and Steve doesn’t know which stores sell felt tipped pens, if any, not that one would be of use anyway; Clint has something sleek and black and looks more like a fashion accessory than a cast. He also has almost a hundred stitches and several pints of a stranger’s blood running through his veins, but he’s alive. Steve keeps glancing in his direction as subtly as possible, trying to confirm to his still shrieking brain that it’s real—Clint’s alive and they’re all suddenly okay again.

It’s the first movie night following the accident and also Bruce’s turn to pick. Once Steve had been sure that would mean artsy movies with grand concepts, now he knows it means horror movies, the more over the top and gruesome the better. Bruce loves more the escapism of the truly absurd, as well as not-so-subtly trolling his friends into suffering through his terrible cinematic choices.

 “Does this character have a last name?” Tony demands, still a little too exuberant, running on echoes of adrenaline and an undercurrent of shock that Steve recognizes all too well. “Does he even have a _first_ name? I challenge any one of you, right now, to come up with this guy’s name!”

“His name is Spoon Witherspoon,” Natasha offers, and, as always, it’s impossible to tell if she’s being serious or not.

“His name is Dead Meat,” Bruce counters sagely. “He isn’t even a character—he’s an embodiment of quirky one liners, which is usually the signal of the character first to die.”

“It’s usually a signal of formulaic and unrealistic _drivel_ _!"_

There are werewolves and unlikely, confusing fires but it isn’t until one of the movie protagonists gets partially disemboweled and keeps on running that Clint openly scoffs, throwing up his one functional arm in disgust. “Suuuure,” he drawls, exchanging a look with Natasha. “I got stabbed once and it hurt so much I was afraid I _wouldn’t_ die.”

“Well, _I’d_ keep running if I got gutted,” Tony tells him confidently, snaking his arm over the back of the couch, his thumb just resting on top of Clint’s injured shoulder, “but only because I’m super tough like that.”

 _We’re alive_ , is all Steve hears behind every snarky comment, _We’re still okay_ behind every moment of vehement levity. _We won_ , he reminds himself, trying to ignore the elided _this time_ that wants to chase the thought.

They’d won, but it still somehow feels like a loss.

 

*******

“Long accepted as an allegory for the herdlike mentality of consumerism, zombie movies reflect our need to quantify society’s bad habits as something ‘other’ that can be outrun but never truly vanquished,” Steve reads, then looks up Natasha doubtfully.

“It’s also possible that it’s just a really shitty movie genre,” she suggests, and marks a careful line through the title on their list.

 “Singin’ in the Rain”, on the other hand, earns enthusiastic black and blue checkmarks. _Dancing_ , Natasha writes in the space beside it, and _Princess Leia’s mom_ and then, with an unusually self conscious glance at Steve, _Coulson._

“It was his favorite movie,” she says defensively to his questioning look. “At least he _said_ it was.”

“I can see that; it was really good.”

She still seems uncharacteristically antsy about something and Steve can’t understand it, how watching such a cheerful movie could make her unhappy. She’s quiet for a long time, fiddling with the pen, tapping it against the list, then throwing it down to adjust the pillows on the couch. She moves one on top of the other, fluffs them up, squashes them back down.

“He was mad at first,” Natasha says finally. “When Clint brought me in. But we came around to like one another. I _liked_ him. I _liked_ Phil Coulson.” It’s a choppy narrative unlike her usually careful, measured speech, and Steve makes an aborted move closer to her, concerned. “I liked him, and I knew him, but I never understood him. Not one little bit.”

“Did the movie…help?”

“No. And I didn’t really think it would.” Natasha shakes her head, as in disbelief of her own sentimentality. “I _never_ understood him,” she says again.

“Maybe we don’t need to,” Steve offers. “Maybe we _can’t_. Maybe attempting to learn the same language is the closest we can ever truly get, and sometimes—” he gestures toward the screen “—we can keep trying even after they’re gone. Just to keep the connection.” He hesitates, then reaches out to take her hand. Natasha looks down in surprise, then up at him, her face as unreadable as ever.

Perhaps he’s misread things. Perhaps he’s a victim—and certainly not for the first time—of overly wishful thinking. Maybe, for Natasha, these get togethers really _are_ just another sort of mission, something she does to catch up on her popular culture, dragging Steve along for company and because he’s every bit as clueless as she. Or maybe he’s _not_ reading it wrong, but is going about this poorly—he knows that these days women don’t really like a brooding, commanding man to sweep them dramatically off their feet; that he’s supposed to ask permission, to be careful instead of too assertive.

But then her fingers tighten around his, and she leans forward until their foreheads touch. “I’ve never understood _you_ , either,” she says, and waits. And waits. “ _Steve_.”

“Oh!” he says in realization, and kisses her.

 

*******

Slapstick comedies are not without a certain charm, though usually too silly for Steve’s taste, but Clint loves them, seeming to find nothing funnier than someone tumbling bonelessly down a flight of stairs, or tripping into a closet only to immediately spin out again, but now wearing different clothes or a funny hat. Clint alternates between chuckles and full out, head-thrown-back roars. He looks younger when he laughs, more open faced and somehow boyish.

Steve long ago resigned himself to the idea that any relationship with Natasha Romanov would also include a hearty serving of time spent with Clint Barton, but luckily the archer is easy to get along with. Natasha is nestled between them on the couch, looking happy in the way she so seldom does, the way Steve wishes she could be more often.  It’s almost perfect, almost completely comfortable, and Steve only feels a little like an interloper, like the magic circle the two agents drew around themselves years before can occasionally widen to include him too.

Another improbable string of catastrophes occurs on screen, and Clint laughs loudly. Steve glances as surreptitiously as he can at the clock, wondering how much longer this can possibly go on, and when his gaze moves back he catches Natasha’s knowing smirk.

“I can feel the silent judgement just _oozing_ off you,” she teases.

“Huh? What, about my movie?” Clint scoffs. “Steve, you have no appreciation for modern American comedy!”

The main character falls off the roof— _again_ —and Steve raises his eyebrows pointedly.

 “At least this is better than the movies _Natasha_ wants to watch,” Clint insists. “A bunch of ladies with high-wasted dresses; that fucking ferret-faced Mr. Darcy. Or the one with the maid and the old butler. Nothing happened for two _hours_ , then at the end the butler decided he’s loved her for twenty years, but just never bothered to do anything about it.” Natasha snickers and Clint shakes his head in horror at the memory. “I almost cried during that one, but not for the reasons the filmmakers intended.”

“I think it’s great that you like this kind of thing,” Steve says honestly. “I just can’t figure out _why_ you do.”

Clint sighs dramatically and exchanges a look with Natasha, a whole silent conversation taking place in the space of a moment. “Because nobody dies. Because I don’t learn a lesson. Because it doesn’t reflect the moral failings of society or underscore the fragility of the human condition.”

Steve hums thoughtfully, and Natasha puts a hand on his knee, her fingers tapping idly in time to the movie’s soundtrack. There probably haven’t been many merry moments for people like she and Clint, people that deal in the darkest workings of human hearts. It’s not something he likes to think about—the things that they’ve seen and done. Maybe after a lifetime of too many blurred moral lines and bad memories it’s not really a surprise that when they get to choose, the SHIELD agents inevitably go for sappy romance and goofball comedy—things that only make them happy.

“But _mostly_ ,” Clint continues philosophically, “I like comedies because pratfalls are really fucking funny.”

 

*******

This is the way Natasha’s always been—the reserved, guarded friendliness with the group as a whole, a minute detachment from everyone that isn’t Barton, but then _this_ when she and Steve are alone together. Small and strangled confessions that she can’t make at any other time, touches given more freely and unselfconsciously, when no eyes are on them, when there’s no one to interrupt.

 “You don’t have to go on your next assignment,” he tells her. “You could leave SHIELD. Just be an Avenger.” Steve reaches for her hand and she gives it reluctantly, a sudden wariness in her posture. “Or you could be something else entirely. _Anything_ else. It doesn’t have to be this way.  You don’t have to go.”

“What, and give up being the Black Widow?” She says it lightly, making it into a joke when they both know it isn’t. “Are you going to rescue me, Steve? Whisk me away to live happily ever after in a big brick house with a dog and a white picket fence, just like in some American fairytale?”

Natasha feels she has some sort of karmic debt to work off, but Steve sees trying to do so with SHIELD as filling one hole by digging another, that the feeling of resolution and reconciliation with society she’s waiting for that is never going to come.

He reaches up with his other hand, pushing the fallen strap of her tank top back onto her shoulder. “It could be any way we want it.”

 “This is who I _am_ , Steve,” Natasha insists gently. “I don’t think you understand…there’s nothing to give up. This isn’t Russia, and I don’t need the Captain America version of Hawkeye to sweep in and offer me a different path. I can’t stop being the Black Widow any more than you can pull that super serum from your bones and blood.”

“This is it, then? Just the Avengers and SHIELD and some movie nights and _this_?” He means to gesture to the two of them, but instead his hand just gets lost in the open space between them. “This is all there is for us?”

“It’s more than I ever hoped for in the first place,” Natasha says with a sigh, pulling her hand away carefully. “I’m the hero of my own story for once, and I live with my best friends in a castle in the clouds. Don’t ask me to give it up.”

 

*******

Steve doesn’t worry when the SHIELD agents don’t return on time—they _never_ do—but he does get increasingly concerned after the first week, then the second.

On the fifteenth day he calls Director Fury, who tells him everything’s fine, just taking longer than expected, and Steve absolutely does not imagine Natasha pale and dead, blood running into her hair. Doesn’t imagine them hiding and waiting for rescue, wondering why no one is trying to find them.

The apartment is lonely, in a way it had never been before, before Natasha started coming by and carefully inserted herself into his life. He could go to the common area but that will just be empty, too—Thor is away and Tony and Bruce are holed up in their shared lab, and there’s certainly no room for Steve there. He moves restlessly around the apartment, starts and stops painting a dozen times, leaving all the supplies scattered around—no one will come by to frown at the clutter—and finally picks up the list of movies from its place of honor on the coffee table.

So many are crossed off. So many hours they’ve spent together, at first in a grim, studious silence, but later scrutinizing the content as easily as their teammates—rewinding and restarting scenes repeatedly either to make fun of something or because they’ve been talking themelves and missing all the dialogue. Before, Steve would have said that over a year spent bingewatching movies was an inexcusable waste of time, but now he doesn’t regret a moment of it, because it was time spent with her, with them.

Steve decides to work through the list on his own—she won’t mind, he knows, and will probably even tease about his devotion to the project—but the fifth Harry Potter movie is next in their queue, and that is not acceptable. They’ve watched the series together and seeing one without her feels like a betrayal somehow, a faithlessness, an admission that she might not come back.

He skips all the Harrys to watch “Rosemary’s Baby” instead, trying to enjoy it just for itself, trying not to imagine which teammates would like which parts or identify with which characters better. He makes a solitary blue checkmark next to the title, writes _occult, gaslighting, ambiguous ending_. His handwriting looks large and ridiculous after rows and rows of Natasha’s tiny, neat script.

 

*******

It’s a relief when Tony appears at Steve’s door the next evening, a commiserating smile on his lips and a bulging plastic sack in each hand.  “I was planning a solo pity-party, but then thought it might be more fun for company on my wallow. This one is full of sandwiches—” He raises one sack in offering “—and this one nothing but junk food.”

There’s no way that Tony should even know Steve and Natasha are a couple—they’ve been taking it super slowly and avoiding any public displays, and Clint’s reliably tight-lipped. But of course Tony knows anyway; he knows _everything_ , it seems. Steve shrugs and waves him in.

Tony’s brought beer as well, which Steve only takes so that Tony won’t drink it all himself, the inventor obviously flagging with fatigue and worry, sinking farther and farther into Steve’s couch as he flips morosely through a list of movies. Tony typically goes for science fiction, if only because he likes to harp ceaselessly on the tech, bemoaning how implausible all of it is, but tonight he picks a music documentary that they watch in silence, Tony sighing occasionally and nursing his drink.

The film isn’t very well made, the rockers are as vapid and ridiculous as their music. Steve tries to figure out why anyone would make a documentary about these people and then why anyone else would want to watch it—when it hits him that _no one_ would.

 “It’s a _joke_ ,” he realizes suddenly, vindicated by Tony’s answering grin. “The movie. It’s a farce.”

“It’s called a ‘mockumentary’. This is one of Clint’s favorites.”

Tony’s smile dims a little around the edges, and Steve’s uncomfortably reminded of the way Natasha had scowled her way through Coulson’s musical. It’s all about trying to feel closer to a person that’s gone, in any way possible—the same way Steve still sees Peggy Carter in every heroine and Bucky Barnes in every hero. The way he sees himself in every character flaw, every misstep.

“She doesn’t need me to save her,” Steve says out of nowhere, surprising them both. Then, after a moment’s thought adds, “ _None_ of you do.”

Tony may be the worst person on the planet to discuss something like this with—anything related to feelings usually has him reacting with a verbal shove and hasty escape—but he also might be the only person that understands in this instance. The only one that understands what it’s like to love someone that is made to do terrible things, someone that comes back a little more brittle and broken every time, someone that someday might not come back at all. He also understands how it feels to want to save people you love, and not be allowed.

 _All_ of the Avengers can probably understand that.

 “The only thing I have to offer is Captain America, and none of you need him. None of you need _my_ strength; you’re strong on your own. She doesn’t want me to protect her. What does it mean—” Steve spreads his hands helplessly “—if everything I can do is nothing anyone _wants_?”

Tony blinks at him solemnly, and Steve is starting to regret his emotional outburst when Tony says, “They pay rent for their apartment. Did she ever tell you that? They split it fifty-fifty. I’m one of the richest people on the planet, and they pay _me_ rent. They insisted on it as a condition of moving in, and they still do it—the first day of every month.” Tony’s laugh is both incredulous and sad. “They even insist that JARVIS print them out a receipt.”

“That’s nice, I guess,” Steve offers uncomfortably, sure that it’s one of Tony’s odd jokes, made to diffuse the tension, to spare himself the awkwardness of Steve’s declaration. “Wanting to be fair. Not taking advantage of your generosity.”

“But he’s—   _No_.” Tony sighs, undoubtedly exasperated with Steve’s obtuseness, and sets his beer on the coffee table with a _clunk!_ of finality. “Look, he’s my boyfriend, or my partner, or my whatever-you-want-to-call-it…but he could leave this life in a second and land right on his feet. He doesn’t need me. He doesn’t _want_ to need me. And Natasha doesn’t need you. But they’ve stayed. _You’ve_ stayed. Bruce, too. Thor leaves, but always comes back. That _means_ something, doesn’t it?”

“It means that we’re friends,” Steve says, and Tony makes a frustrated sound.

 “People have always wanted my money, or my gadgets, and have done almost anything to try to get both. Pepper was the first person to love just the ‘Tony’ part of me. And now you guys. How amazing—” Tony cuts himself off and shakes his head, tries again “—how _amazing_ is it that we’ve found people that accept every part of us?”

Natasha doesn’t want the man beneath the Captain America, she wants them _both_ —the war hero and the modern-day fish out of water. She wants him to accept the Natasha that sighs wistfully through romantic period pieces and the Black Widow who fears nothing, who would laugh at the thought of needing a man to protect her.

Tony is right—they _all_ want that from each other, that acceptance, and offer it to the others. Stark’s abrasive and self shielding personality  and his restless savior complex. Bruce’s gentle spirit in the same body as his unforgiving alter-ego. Clint’s destructive self loathing warring with his utter delight in his own abilities. The way Thor can’t be still anywhere, wanting to be everywhere at once, but still being as present as he can, enjoying every brief moment they have together.

They’ve all started out on very different paths and traveled down some very crooked roads, only to somehow end up here all together, and all facing the same direction at the end of the line.

 “You’re right,” Steve says. “I’ve never had so many people before.”

Tony wipes fussily at the water ring he’s left on Steve’s coffee table, swallowing hard, careful not to look up. “Me either.”

 

*******

** EPILOGUE **

Movie Night falls on Bruce’s birthday but it’s Tony’s turn to pick, so in semi-deference to Bruce’s usual choices Tony selects a dark, atmospheric movie that is probably supposed to be creepy but just plays as moody and depressing instead. It’s not very good, and they’re all just half watching—Tony is staring into space with schematics in his eyes, Steve is yawning, and Clint and Natasha keep passing back and forth funny pictures on their phones—when Bruce starts laughing out loud, high and happy, a sound they don’t hear nearly enough.

“That actor looks just like you,” he says to Tony, who snorts dismissively. “Doesn’t he? If he had facial hair, that is.”

Clint, self proclaimed expert on all things Stark, is instantly intrigued. “Holy shit, he _does_! Do you have a brother you haven’t told us about? A twin that your parents inexplicably gave away at birth?”

“If they’re twins then I guess the beard designates Stark as the evil one,” Steve points out, and there are a few scattered chuckles, but Tony looks at him sharply.

“Steeeeeve?” he questions suspiciously, drawing the word out, a look of awed disbelief slowly spreading over his face. “Was that—? Did I _really_ just hear you make a Star Trek reference??”

“Nah,” he answers hastily, “you know I don’t know anything about that stuff. It was just a fluke. Just a kind of—you know—glitch in the Matrix.” Steve winks at Natasha as Tony gasps theatrically and claps a hand to his heart.

“The Matrix?” Bruce echoes doubtfully. “What’s that? Is it a movie or something?”

Clint laughs incredulously. “ _Bruce_!!! Come _on_ , everyone in the _world_ knows about—"

Steve and Natasha grin at one another and he wraps his fingers around hers, not caring if anyone sees.

It feels like a win.

**Author's Note:**

> I spent way too much time--an embarrassing amount of time, actually--working out the timelines to all of these. I wanted all the stories to reference one another, but also be independent because I personally find it daunting to jump into a series that's 29 stories deep. 
> 
> Just for storytelling purposes, Natasha's fic is chronologically first, then Clint's, then Tony's. Steve's yearlong fic runs concurrently with parts of Clint's and Tony's. Bruce's encompasses the most time, and that fic's ending comes last. I should be good and rearrange the stories accordingly, but I suffer from extraordinary laziness. I also kind of like them in the order I wrote them. But mostly: lazy.
> 
> I have one more story at a "good" place, but if it doesn't get finished before the end of April I'll catch everybody after the Infinity War breaks out! My oldest son and I are getting ready to binge some Marvel movies in preparation! (Probably not Thor's, though. Sorry, buddy.)


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